World’s most powerful group meets in St Moritz

The Bilderberg Group, a controversial invitation-only gathering of the world’s power brokers, is set to meet in the Swiss resort of St Moritz on Thursday.

Critics denounce the four-day conference, which is closed to the prying eyes of the media and doesn’t issue any press releases, for having a deleterious influence on world politics.

Previous guests include kings, presidents, captains of industry and heads of international organisations. United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has attended, as have Microsoft founder Bill Gates, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and current Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke.

Another regular is Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund, currently facing criminal charges.

“The Bilderberg Group is like a restricted circle of guests from the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos,” said Sergio Rossi, economics professor at Fribourg University.

He said the regulars at Bilderberg – named after the original conference held at the Hotel de Bilderberg in the Netherlands in 1954 – find the WEF a “hectic beanfeast”.